High Barbaree

High Barbaree (1947)

Six Great Stars! A Thousand Unforgettable Moments!

After his plane is downed in the South Pacific, a Navy flier recounts his life to a co-pilot while awaiting rescue.

Date of release
1947-05-01
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 31m
Genres
Action, Drama, War
Director
Jack Conway

Casting

Interesting facts

High Barbaree is a 1947 American drama war film directed by Jack Conway. It stars Van Johnson and June Allyson, in the third of their six screen pairings. The screenplay based on the novel High Barbaree (1945) by authors Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

Production

After a period of inactivity for Van Johnson where he had brooded about his decision not to enlist in World War II, the studio cast him with one of his favorite co-stars, June Allyson, who had been a close friend ever since the pair had performed on Broadway and had been budding stars in Hollywood.

The studio followed the plotline of the original novel which had a "Romeo and Juliet" ending with Allyson's character dying, Johnson hearing that her ship had been sunk, and subsequently dying before he is rescued. When previewed in Los Angeles with this ending, 40% of the audience cards wanted a happy ending with Johnson not dying. A costly $50,000 remake had both of the screen lovers surviving.

The saga of the Consolidated PBY Catalinas flown in the Pacific theater featured predominantly in the film, and were often shown in interiors as well as through the inter-cutting of PBYs in flight from combat footage. These flying boats, first used for reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare, were also specially modified to operate as night raiders.

The use of the Ryan Aircraft plant in San Diego as the site for the lead actor's test flying adventures included a lively wringing out of the Stinson L-1 Vigilant and Ryan ST trainer, flown by Paul Mantz.

Tornado footage from The Wizard of Oz was reused in this film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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